Ad wars: Future Group to take a dig at Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon

Picture source: ThinkStockFuture Group CEO Kishore Biyani, who’s never made a secret of his disdain for e-commerce rivals, plans to step up the offensive with a series of ads that use word play to target the three main marketplaces — Flip the Cart, Snap the Deal and Amaz-Off.

This is probably the first time a brick-and-mortar retailer will engage in comparative advertising against online rivals, which have been grabbing share by discounting products.

After nearly three years of deep discounting, most online sellers are now pulling back from this strategy in a desperate effort to shore up their finances, making them vulnerable on this front. Ecommerce discounts are now mostly limited to select brands such as online exclusives, old merchandise and own labels.

The combined losses of the three leading online companies — Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal — ballooned to Rs 5,052 crore in FY15 from Rs 1,000 crore in the year before as they sought to build market share. At the same time, several brickand-mortar retailers clocked double-digit same-store sales growth last year, a reversal from the trend in 2014 when physical stores reported subdued demand as ecommerce players wooed away consumers.

As part of the Future exercise, three newspaper jacket ads on Friday will direct shoppers to its Brand Factory discount outlet instead of hunting online for better prices in a manner reminiscent of the pot shots that Pepsi and Coca-Cola took against each other in the 1990s.

The theme will be continued inside the stores, with staff and cashiers wearing T-shirts with messages such as ‘My deal got snapped’ and ‘My cart got flipped’. The 40 or so Brand Factory stores will also wear new facades and selfie zones with the same theme targeting Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon.

“We just want to prove the point that both our merchandise assortment and pricing are better compared to online companies. We need to make consumers aware of this fact,” said Biyani, adding that Brand Factory’s gross merchandise value (GMV) in the year to March 2016 was Rs 3,500 crore. Future is India’s biggest listed retailer.

“While we use sales numbers to talk about performance, we are bigger than Myntra or Flipkart in terms of GMV,” he said. As part of its Great Offline Denim Festival, Brand Factory will sell nearly a dozen brands such as Levi’s, Benetton, Lee, Wrangler and Pepe jeans at a 50% discount for three days.

Future has fired ad shots at e-commerce before. For instance, “You can't take the nation for granted even for a day,” was aimed at Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale in 2014.

Snapdeal has taken digs at Flipkart and Amazon with its campaign tag line: ‘You don’t need a billion offers to amaze you. You just need to snap the best ones’. It also had about 100 billboards in 20 cities emblazoned with the phrase ‘Achha kiya bata diya, #YahanSeKharido’ aimed at Flipkart, which was running the ‘Nahin khareeda? #AchhaKiya’ campaign last year.

“The intent of a campaign is really crucial,” said McCann India CEO Prasoon Joshi. “Whether the campaign is offensive or not will depend on the intent of the brand. If the intent is shallow fun then it is different. But I personally believe that taking creative potshots at competition cannot be a long-term strategy.”

Brick-and-mortar retailers are also investing in omni-channel strategies and experimenting with global models such as flash sales, such as by offering a single product for sale for a period of 24 to 36 hours. “We are planning flash sales where consumers can get discounts, coupons and offers on several brands by using an app but buying at physical stores for certain hours or days,” said Rajiv Prakash, co-founder of Shouut, which is in talks with Shoppers Stop, Oberoi Mall, Decathlon and DLF Promenade for deal-of-the-day sales.